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On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 21:55:50 -0000, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:
I can certainly understand that Japan and Germany could and did
believe the US was hostile. What I dont see is how that put the
USA at cross purposes with itself.

Do you see an advantage to the US in allowing Japan to
dominate the Pacific and/or Nazi Germany to dominate
Europe ?

oh yeah that's right, everything the usa has ever done has been for
the good of the world, sorry that i keep forgetting that it is
ordained by god to rule forever and never does anything wrong (i think
thats what you guys learn in school isn't it?)

"To make matters still worse, the British foreign secretary, Sir
Edward Grey, even refused to promise British neutrality during the
Franco-German (1st world war) war in return for a German counter
promise to respect Belgian territory!"

The simple truth is that, as Grey later admitted, Britain was so
committed to the support of France by secret agreements that, with or
without the invasion of Belgium, she would have entered the war.
Otherwise he would have felt compelled to resign. Indeed, it is
evident from John Morley's famous Memorandum On Resignation as well as
from the personal assurance of John Burns to Professor Barnes that the
actual decision of the British Cabinet to go to war was made before
the matter of Belgian was even mentioned!"

Can anyone be assure that the follishness of WWI that lead to a
Whit eracial bloodbath has been learned?

In this connection, the invasion of "little Belgium" was widely
advertised as a particularly reprehensible though typical
manifestation of a brutal and ruthless German policy. On the other
hand, the entry of Britain into the war for the ostensible purpose of
defending Belgian territorial integrity received almost universal
acclaim. The posture of a crusading knight on a white steed charging
to the defense of the outraged little country was, despite its
essential falsity, assumed with relish and exploited with consummate
skill by pro-British propagandists.

The shabby dishonesty of this posture becomes evident when we realize
that during a Franco-German crisis in 1887, at a time when
Anglo-German relations were most cordial, the British press had openly
and unashamedly discussed the advisability of giving the green light
to the German army to cross Belgium for the purpose of initiating
military operations against France. Finally, the British minister,
Lord Vivian, informed the distraught Belgian government that Belgium
would have to prepare to act alone in such a contingency. As Professor
Langer aptly remarks, "considering all this, it is hardly possible to
take the denials of the British government during the World War very
seriously."

As a further commentary on alleged Allied "idealism" in this matter we
may cite the facts, since uncovered, that the Anglo-French war plans
of 1911, 1912, and 1913 themselves contemplated the violation of
Belgian territorial integrity in certain circumstances that might
arise during a war with Germany!

"To make matters still worse, the British foreign secretary, Sir
Edward Grey, even refused to promise British neutrality during the
Franco-German war in return for a German counter promise to respect
Belgian territory!"

The simple truth is that, as Grey later admitted, Britain was so
committed to the support of France by secret agreements that, with or
without the invasion of Belgium, she would have entered the war.
Otherwise he would have felt compelled to resign. Indeed, it is
evident from John Morley's famous Memorandum On Resignation as well as
from the personal assurance of John Burns to Professor Barnes that the
actual decision of the British Cabinet to go to war was made before
the matter of Belgian was even mentioned!

The Allies, and particularly Great Britain, by contrast, proved
themselves most capable of adroitly manipulating world opinion by
widespread diffusion of fantastic tales of German villainy. Britain,
of course, had the additional technical advantage of control of the
cables and hence could rigidly censor all news coming to America. As
C. Hartley Grattan expressed it, "honest, unbiased news simply
disappeared out of the American papers along about the middle of
August, 1914."44

Incredible tales of German barbarism in Belgium and France gave rise
to a myth of unique German savagery that continues to color the
thinking of many persons to this day. German soldiers, the world was
gravely informed, amused themselves by cutting off the hands of
Belgian babies. Another oft-repeated tale related how German soldiers
amputated the breasts of Belgian women out of sheer viciousness. A
slightly different variation of this story asserted that the
amputation had been carried out by syphilitic Germans who, having
ravished the women, wished to warn their countrymen thereby. There
were persistent rumors about the crucifixion of Canadian soldiers.
Perhaps the most repulsive and widely circulated of these fabrications
was that concerning a German corpse factory where the bodies of both
Allied and German soldiers killed in battle were allegedly melted down
for fats and other products useful to the German war effort. The fact
that Arthur Ponsonby utterly demolished the canard45 did not prevent
the Soviets from charging again at Nuremberg that during World War II
a "Danzig firm ... constructed an electrically heated tank for making
soap out of human fat."46

Atrocity propaganda was immeasurably effective in the United States
during the first World War. When in the American papers of May 11-12,
1915, which was during the very week following the torpedoing of the
Lusitania, there appeared the notorious Bryce Report on alleged German
atrocities, American indignation at Germany reached a blind and
febrile peak. The membership of the Bryce Committee, appointed by
Parliament to investigate reports of alleged German atrocities,
comprised some of the most distinguished jurists and historians in
great Britain. To Americans it seemed that the chairman, Viscount
Bryce, was one Briton who would never offer himself as the tool of
tendentious propaganda. Bryce was a scholar of profound erudition and
was considered by many to be the ablest foreign student of American
government and institutions.

The "proofs" advanced by the Bryce Committee in support of the wildest
tales of German fiendishness, as well as the methods employed in
gathering them, violated every elementary rule of evidence. Careful
non-German scholars, above all Arthur Ponsonby, have long since
demonstrated the entire project to have been a tissue of distortions
and outright falsehoods.47 Evidently, Bryce and his esteemed
colleagues had few qualms about perverting the truth if it redounded
to the benefit of what they termed the "high cause" of Mother England.
In later years other scholars in both Britain and America would
display a similar willingness to prostitute talent and reputation in
the interest of writing vicious propaganda.

The grave consequences of all this lurid atrocity propaganda can
hardly be exaggerated. Indeed, "propaganda" of atrocities ... might be
said to have contributed more than any other single factor to the
making of a severe peace."48 The extreme severity of that peace, it
should be pointed out, provided certain assurance of the rise of
Hitler or someone like him who would beguile the long-suffering and
much-maligned German people with promises to snap the chains of
slavery forged by the untried and unpunished "war criminals" of
Versailles.

sorry guys unlike some people i guess i have a life that exists
somewhere other than on the internet...i don't have the time to get
dragged into monotonous debate.